


It's Not Someday Yet

by damthosefandoms



Series: Gotham Academy Shenanigans [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Dick Grayson is Robin, Gen, High School, Set in Season 1, Shenanigans, You do the math, and doesn’t know dick is robin, artemis has a slight crush on wally, but not a High School AU, dick has a superman lunchbox, he skipped a grade?, he’s a mathlete in canon why doesnt anyone talk about that, it’s the bane of bruce’s existence, like right after misplaced but its not really important lol, school lunches are gross unless its friday pizza day, the yj fandom needs more fics of artemis and dick messing around at school, they say holy shit and thats pretty much all it is, they’re just at school, this is rated t purely bc these are high schoolers, yj dick should be in middle school?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26164801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damthosefandoms/pseuds/damthosefandoms
Summary: “We’ll laugh about this someday,” he’d said. Artemis had asked Dick about it at least four times since that day, and she still didn’t know what it meant. He refused to tell her. He’d just shrug and say that, “If you’re still asking, it’s not someday yet.”
Relationships: Artemis Crock & Dick Grayson, Artemis Crock/Wally West
Series: Gotham Academy Shenanigans [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906318
Comments: 34
Kudos: 399





	It's Not Someday Yet

**Author's Note:**

> First off thanks to @sohotthateveryonedied for editing this bc I’m lazy!! I love my best friend!!!
> 
> Second: I’m still out here doing all the hard work. Like I said in the tags, the YJ fandom needs more fics of Artemis and Dick at school together. It’s such a funny concept holy crap
> 
> I don’t have much more to say so… read on, I guess?

Artemis drops her tray onto the table and takes a seat directly across from Dick Grayson. He’s pulling out his one-of-a-kind, collectible, metal Superman lunchbox. 

He once told her that there’s a story behind the lunchbox—something about his foster father and Superman and some kind of history—but Artemis can’t understand why  _ Bruce Wayne _ would have beef with  _ Superman, _ so she sort of tuned Dick out when he was explaining it.

He flips the lid open, then turns and looks at Artemis. 

“Hi,” Dick says, pulling out a Capri-sun. “Barbara is out sick today.”

Artemis doesn’t say anything. She just nods her head as a greeting. Usually, when Barbara is absent, the two of them just sit in silence until the bell rings. 

But today, Artemis has other plans. She sits back in her chair and watches as Dick pulls the wrapper off his straw. Her mind is going a thousand miles a minute, and she doesn’t even know why, but the kid looks so focused and for a second, she can almost picture Robin sitting there in his place. 

Weird. There’s that thought again. A really  _ weird  _ thought. Sometimes she wonders, though. Dick’s a weird kid. For example: the first day of school. She had no idea who he was. He popped up out of nowhere, took a selfie with her, and then in the blink of an eye was gone. If Artemis didn’t know any better, she’d guess he was a speedster or something. 

“We’ll laugh about this someday,” he’d said. Artemis had asked Dick about it at least four times since that day, and she _still_ didn’t know what it meant. He refused to tell her. He’d just shrug and say that, “If you’re still asking, it’s not someday yet.”

If Dick can get away with doing weird things out of nowhere, so can she. So she asks him exactly what's on her mind today.

“Hey, do you ever think about where all those Justice League sidekicks go to school?” She asks, maybe with a little  _ too  _ much interest in her voice, but it’s not like she’s looking for  _ real  _ answers. She already knows most of them, anyway.

Dick, however, is so caught off-guard that his normally-steady hands jerk and instead of sticking the straw of his Capri-sun into the hole where it’s supposed to go, he stabs it directly through the center. It pops out the other side, miraculously not spilling juice everywhere.

He looks up at Artemis, then frowns at the defective juice pouch in his hands. He sets it down on the table (figuring out how to drink that is a challenge for another time) and folds his hands. He looks Artemis directly in the eyes. 

“You’ve caught my interest,” he states. “Go on.”

It’s weird; Dick Grayson is pretty much the only person at Gotham Academy who Artemis can’t read. There’s so much emotion in his expressions and movements. He never stops talking. Yet somehow Artemis still can’t figure him out.

“Okay, well…” Artemis pauses before she even starts. 

She can’t exactly just  _ say  _ where all of her teammates go to school. It’s not like she doesn’t  _ know.  _ M’gann and Conner are at Happy Harbor High School, but the two of them aren’t even known to the public as heroes yet. Zatanna  _ just _ joined the team last weekend. Artemis knows she’s at some catholic school in New York, but she doesn’t know which one. She honestly has no idea how school works in Atlantis, so Kaldur’s out of the question, and Wally’s at Keystone High School. 

So naturally, she starts with Robin. He’s what got her thinking about this anyway.

“They’re all teenagers, right?” Artemis says. Dick nods.

“Right, so theoretically, they’re all in high school. Except Robin, I think. He’s like, what? Twelve? Thirteen?” 

Dick blinks. He keeps his face as blank as possible. “You think Robin is  _ twelve? _ Isn’t that a little...young?”

Artemis shrugs. “I don’t know, he’s short.”

Dick bites his tongue to keep from snapping back at her. He’s still expecting a growth spurt, thank you very much. 

“Anyway, he’s probably in middle school. I’d guess seventh or eighth grade, but who knows. But like, the others, right?”

Artemis waves her arms as she explains her theory. Clearly, she’s been spending so much time around Wally that she’s picking up his mannerisms. Dick can deal with that; he’s been putting up with Wally for  _ years _ now. 

He actually doesn’t talk to Artemis much. At the cave, yeah, they’ve had their moments, but that’s Robin, not Dick himself. Honestly, this is probably the best conversation Dick has ever had with her since a few months earlier when she confronted him about Wally’s ridiculous disbelief in magic. 

(She’d started ranting to him about their trip to the Tower of Fate, and Dick laughed and told her that Wally was just a disappointed Harry Potter fan who never got his Hogwarts letter. In Wally’s defense, he really does look like he could be a Weasley.)

Again, though, that was Robin, not Dick. He reminds himself that Artemis doesn’t know the difference. This is just them at school. It’s not the same as talking to his teammate…but Dick doesn’t really care. He thinks she’s cool either way. He decides to throw her a bone, because he’s pretty sure he can tell where her thought process is going with this.

“I’ll bet Aqualad probably goes to school in Atlantis, if they even  _ have _ schools underwater,” Dick offers. Anything to keep the conversation off of Robin—off of himself. 

Artemis nods eagerly. Clearly, she’s thought of that already. He nailed it. “Red Arrow’s eighteen, which means he must have graduated already, but he probably went to high school in Star City.” 

Dick raises an eyebrow at that. Time to play dumb. “How’d you know that he’s eighteen?” He asks. No normal civilian should know that. He wonders what kind of excuse she can come up with.

Artemis holds up one of the weird, floppy French fries that came with her school lunch and makes a face. They’re not very good—it’s the weird kind that are all slimy and gross. It’s too bad it’s not Friday. They have pizza as an option every day of the week in the cafeteria, but on Fridays they order it in special from one of the best pizza places in Gotham. 

“He just looks older, I guess. And didn’t he just quit being a sidekick like, last July? Maybe he literally graduated out of the job.” She frowns and drops the French fry back onto the tray. It makes a  _ splat  _ noise and both she and Dick wince.

Dick pulls out a bag of potato chips from inside his lunchbox and hands it to her. She takes it without question. Then he tilts his head like a confused puppy and looks at her. 

“Are you implying that being a sidekick is, like...an after-school activity, or something?” He asks, intrigued. That’s not exactly how he would’ve described it.

“It’s probably more like volunteering, I think. Like how we have to do it to get hours for graduation so we can get our names called earlier when we walk or whatever?” Artemis says.

Dick laughs out loud at that. “Yeah, okay. Volunteering. Isn’t it a known fact that Robin was like,  _ eight  _ or something when he started? Can you imagine Batman trying to sell  _ that _ to a little kid? Like—hold on.” 

Dick holds his hands up next to his head and sticks up one finger on each hand, clearly pretending to be Batman. “Hey, kid, want to get some volunteer hours done? We can build some houses for the homeless, walk some dogs, help old ladies cross the street, and oh, yeah—fight a bunch of psychopaths and rescue people from burning buildings! I know that sounds scary, but don’t worry—it’ll look  _ fantastic _ on your resume!” 

He and Artemis both crack up.

“What’s up with that, anyway?” Artemis asks, when they’re both calming down. 

Dick picks up his sandwich and raises an eyebrow as he takes a bite. “What do you mean?”

“What kind of hero dresses a little kid up in a leotard and lets them fight criminals every night? It’s crazy.” Artemis watches Dick’s face as she asks it. He suddenly seems very interested in his sandwich.

“Maybe it wasn’t Batman’s decision to make.” Dick says, sounding just a bit too confident in his argument. “Maybe Robin had his reasons to do it, you know?”

“An  _ eight-year-old _ had reasons why he wanted to punch mob bosses and supervillains in the face?” Artemis looks confused now. Dick sounds really serious for some reason, but she doesn’t get why it would be so personal for him. “I mean, I know they say video games are making kids more violent, but—”

Dick cuts her off. “Sometimes things happen, Artemis. Maybe Robin had a bad thing happen to him and wanted revenge. Dunno about you, but  _ I _ totally understand it.”

“After all,” Dick says, picking at the crust of his sandwich, “the best day of my life was when Batman and Robin caught the guy who killed my parents.”

Oh. Right.  _ That’s _ why it’s personal for him. 

Artemis is quiet for a minute. She glares down at the bag of chips in her hand. 

Then she says, “Yeah, maybe I can relate too. If I got the chance to get back at...”

Artemis shakes all the thoughts of her father and sister out of her head. She crumples the empty chip bag and tosses it over her shoulder. It lands in the closest garbage can. She wasn’t even looking. “Yeah, I can understand it, too.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes. Just when it’s getting awkward, Dick breaks it.

“Kid Flash is probably in your grade, you know. He’s, what, sixteen-ish?” Dick says. 

Artemis stares at him. It’s like he could hear her thoughts; how’d he know that her mind wandered and she’d started to think about Wally? “Fifteen, I think. A very _ immature _ fifteen. And he’s a total dork, too.” 

Dick laughs at that. For some reason, it doesn’t occur to Artemis that there was absolutely no reason why  _ Dick Grayson  _ should be laughing at a comment about  _ Kid Flash _ being an immature dork. She shouldn’t even have  _ said _ that part, honestly. How would she know anything about his personality, unless she actually knew him?

But Dick laughs, and she doesn’t question it for some reason. For some reason, in that moment in time, it made perfect sense for Dick to laugh at a joke about Wally. As if he knew exactly what Artemis meant—as if Dick  _ knew _ Wally. But Artemis doesn’t realize that at the time.

Then, for some  _ other _ reason that she’ll never understand, Artemis adds, “He’s...he’s kind of cute, though.” 

And Dick proceeds to choke on his sandwich.

Artemis tries to help him, but Dick waves her off. He’s coughing, which means he can breathe. After a few seconds and a long sip of water (from Artemis’ water bottle that she’d just bought and hadn’t opened yet), he’s all good again.

Of course, the entire time he was choking, he wasn’t even bothered by it—he was more trying to process the fact that  _ Artemis just admitted to having a crush on Wally.  _ Granted, she has no idea that she just told  _ Robin  _ that, but  _ still.  _ Holy shit. 

He can’t even tell anyone about this! His go-to person for gossip is  _ Wally.  _ That’s not an option! Holy shit!!!

“Are you okay?” Artemis asks, and when Dick can finally breathe again, he says, “Yeah, yeah, just fine.”

He takes another sip of water. “I’m going to have to owe you a water bottle,” he says. “Forgot to bring cash to school with me today.”

Artemis waves her hand. “Don’t bother, billionaire. I don’t really need it. Having the excuse to get out of class to go get a drink at the fountain is much better.”

Dick takes a breath and relaxes. Artemis is back in her seat now. 

He looks her in the eyes. “So, you like Kid Flash? What kind of ‘like’ are we talking here?  _ Like-like?” _

Artemis rolls her eyes at him.  _ ‘Like-like? _ What are you,  _ thirteen?” _

Dick stares blankly at her. 

“Right,” Artemis says. He  _ is _ thirteen. “Skipped a grade. I always forget.”

Dick holds up a finger. “I didn’t  _ skip _ anything. I simply tested into school at a higher level than most kids my age. You can’t skip a grade if you started out ahead—”

“—and were homeschooled before that,” Artemis finishes for him. Dick’s only corrected her a thousand times. Annoying little brat.

“Anyway,” Dick says, tossing his empty sandwich bag into the garbage can (again, without looking) and closing his superman lunchbox. “Kid Flash. You’re into him?”

Artemis shrugs. In any other situation, she’d be getting super defensive right now and blatantly denying the truth. She’s in denial. She’s comfortable with that. 

The only reason she isn’t freaking out right now is that she doesn’t really need to. It’s not like Dick knows Kid Flash personally. It’s not like he’ll head straight to Mount Justice after school and run around telling everyone he knows that she has a crush on Wally. 

She looks at Dick and tells him the truth. “I guess? Like I said, he’s kind of cute.”

Dick stares at her. “He wears a mask. You can’t even see his face. How do you know if he’s cute?”

Artemis freezes. “Well, yeah, but...sometimes you don’t need to see their face. You can just tell, you know? Personality and stuff. He’s a hero, a good person. I respect that.”

“Yeah, okay. I guess you have a point. Besides,” Dick says, shrugging, “it’s not like you actually  _ know _ him. None of this matters in the long run, right?” His eyes widen when he realizes what he said. “Ha! Get it?  _ Run?”  _

Artemis laughs, despite herself. She’ll give Dick Grayson credit for one thing and one thing only: he’s the only person on Earth who could out-pun Robin.

Dick laughs at his joke, but Artemis just rolls her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m talking about my crush with a literal  _ baby,” _ she says.

“I’m  _ thirteen, _ Artemis. And my name is  _ Dick. _ I think it’s okay to assume I know more than you’d think,” he says, smirking.

The bell rings. Dick looks up. He shoves his lunchbox into his backpack. 

“We both have math now. Race you there?” Artemis challenges him. They’re in the same math class despite Dick being a grade under her because he’s so advanced. 

Dick smiles, pulling his backpack on. “They don’t call us  _ mathletes _ for nothing, Artemis. I’m much faster than I look.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“But not as fast as your boyfriend.” 

Artemis grabs Dick by the back of his backpack, pulling the kid behind her, and then takes off running.

Dick’s a brat, but he’s still a pretty good friend.

**Author's Note:**

> Artemis, showing Dick a picture on her phone: “and this is my boyfriend, wally. he’s from central city. he’s trying to stack cheez-it’s on his face in this picture he’s such a loser” 
> 
> Dick, internally panicking because he has that exact same picture of Wally set as his background on his phone: “huh. cool”
> 
> (ps my tumblr is @damthosefandoms if you wanna know!!)


End file.
